We continue our history of Mario series by going back nearly 20 years to the beginning of the 1990s...
1990 December 1989 saw the release of The Wizard, a Nintendo-sponsored movie about a video game championship. The final 15 minutes of the movie showed off Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time, sending any Nintendo-obsessed kid watching the movie into an excited frenzy.
As a result of this, anticipation for the third game in the series was already at fever pitch when the game was finally released in America on 12 February 1990. Among the game's many new features was the ability to don a number of special suits tht gave Mario special abilities. The raccoon suit allowed him to fly, for example, while the frog suit let him swim quickly underwater and the tanuki suit allowed him to turn into a stone statue. With Super Mario Bros. 3, much like Mario in his raccoon suit, Mario fever had reached new heights.
Super Mario Bros. 3 Year: 1990 (US), 1991 (UK). Format: NES
Some claim that Super Mario Bros. 3 was the pinnacle of Mario's history and the greatest Mario game ever created. A huge game for its time, Super Mario Bros. 3's big selling point was its wide variety of new power-ups, most notably the Leaf that turns Mario into Raccoon Mario and enables him to fly. The other abilities (including the Frog Suit, Tanuki Suit and Hammer Brother suit) only added to the charm of the game and helped provide a Mario experience like no other before or since.
Dr Mario Year: 1990. Format: Game Boy
One of the most successful puzzle games of all time, Dr Mario was Nintendo's attempt to make its own contribution to the popular 'falling block' craze spawned by Tetris the previous year. Dr Mario involved dropping different-coloured pills into a huge medicine bottle and matching the colours up to destroy viruses. Dr Mario became a popular game and has since been remade for the N64, GBA and most recently as a mini-game in More Brain Training on the DS. Dr Mario also appeared as a hidden fighter in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
The Adventures Of Super Mario Bros. 3 Year: 1990. Cartoon Series
Following the success of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show cartoons, its creators, DiC, decided to make another cartoon based on the newly-released third game. The live-action segments were (thankfully) dropped, allowing for full-length cartoons. Much like in the game, Bowser's kids were present in the cartoon, though they had completely different names because the producers were basing the cartoon on the Japanese version of the game, which didn't give names to the Koopalings. Regardless, the cartoon was still very successful and was a faithful interpretation of the game.
1991 In November 1990, Nintendo of Japan released its new 16-bit console, the Super Famicom, as well as Super Mario Bros 4. The following year it launched in America as the SNES and had Super Mario Bros 4 - renamed Super Mario World -bundled with it.
Mario's first 16-bit adventure transformed the platform genre once again, much as the first and third games had done before it, with its huge game map, fantastically colourful graphics and loads of secret stages (it contained 96 different level exits in total).
It also introduced a new gameplay element in the shape of Yoshi, a little green dinosaur mate with a healthy appetite. As well as being able to eat enemies and turn them into coins or power-ups, Yoshi also acted as a shield of sorts, allowing Mario to take a hit without being damaged. The addition of Yoshi helped give Super Mario World its fresh 'you've never seen this before' feeling.
Meanwhile Mario's complete dominance of the gaming world was about to be challenged, as Nintendo's main competitor Sega released what it promised to be its next big game, Sonic The Hedgehog, for its 16-bit Mega Drive console in July. The console wars were just about to kick off, and it was up to Nintendo to ensure that it pulled out all the stops to retain its place as kings of the gaming castle. The next few years would be the most important in gaming history.
Super Mario World Year: 1991 (US), 1992 (UK). Format: SNES
Mario's fourth console platformer had more hidden bits than a chameleon farm and truly thrust the portly plumber into the next generation of gaming. It was also the first game to introduce Mario's dinosaur mate Yoshi, who is found trapped in an egg at the beginning of the game. The fact that it was bundled with most SNES systems at the start of the console's life helped it end up shifting somewhere in the region of 20.6 million homes worldwide, second only to the original Super Mario Bros. Was Super Mario World the high point of Mario's career? Some would say so.
That's delay to do it We may complain today about our games coming out a month or two after they do in Japan or America (a case in point being Super Paper Mario), but overall we're not doing too badly now in terms of releases. Sometimes we even get games before Japan or months before anyone else. So think how frustrating it must have been for UK gamers in the NES and SNES days who had to put with huge delays; for example, while the Americans were getting Super Mario World, we were still waiting for Super Mario Bros. 3. Check these release dates, and you'll see why things have since improved drastically for British gamers in recent years...
Super Mario Bros. Japan - 13/09/1985 US - 18/10/1985 UK - 15/05/1987
Super Mario Bros. 3 Japan - 23/10/1988 US - 12/02/1990 UK - 29/08/1991
Super Mario World Japan - 21/11/1990 US - 13/08/1991 UK - 04/06/1992
